Stop Me Before I Vote Again

In fact the battle against global warming was over before it began, and global warming won. That being the case, what does it matter whether one admits or denies the phenomenon? Isn't the question... academic?

Unfortunately, yes, it is. The solutions coming down the pike are toxic. The good guys lost a long way back. Pockets of remediation are still possible, and those so inclined are doing what they can already. They would be regardless of the accuracy of the anthropogenic warming models. Ironically, perhaps, Cockburn is among their best friends. He's always been fond of eccentrics.

Michael,

Thanks for writing about this. I'm a newcomer to your blog, and global warming is one of my major interests. So I searched your posts to see if I could find your opinion. It was actually through those that I found out what Cockburn's position was (I generally enjoy his work, on other topics).

I agree with you that the structure of the system is such that little to nothing will be done to cut back GHG emissions. I also agree that in general, american liberals are silly.

And I do share your scepticism of computer models. I don't view them as major components of the evidence for global warming. Instead, I view them as best efforts for predicting what MIGHT be the consequences.

But there's much more to the evidence than models. We know that CO2 acts as a warming agent through the radiative forcing effect. This can be proven in a lab, and dimished heat escaping from the atmosphere as a result of increased CO2 and other gases has been measured.

Indeed, the fact that we have these gases in the atmosphere is what keeps the dark side of the earth from freezing at night, and keeps the planet warm enough to live on.

What we're not certain about is how much the increase in CO2 will warm us, and what sort of spinoff effects will occur as a result of its increase. What really has me worried are the proposed positive feedback effects, such as:

1. Melting ice decreasing the reflectivity of the planet, which increases heat absorbtion.
2. Melting permafrost releasing much methane, accelerating warming.
3. Potential release of undersea frozen methane, due to a warming ocean.
4. The saturation of the ocean with CO2 decreasing its ability to absorb our emissions, putting more CO2 in the atmosphere.

There are other proposed feedback effects as well. They include some negative ones (a possible increase in cloud cover?), but generally, it looks like the positive feedback will outweigh the negative feedback.

So I'm concerned about these things. I don't think we'll get out act together to stop it, but that doesn't prevent me from wanting to have as accurate a picture of the world as I can manage. I'm not really basing my worry on the models, but rather the calculated increase in energy remaining on earth as a result of increased GHG emissions, and those feedback effects listed above and others.

I don't know exactly what will happen, but we will almost certainly see warming, and warming will almost certainly cause us much trouble, including the privileged. The main uncertainty, for me, is how bad it will turn out to be.

Models represent an effort to answer that last question, but I agree with your analysis, and I don't think we should rely too heavily on them.

If you're interesting in reading more, there is a good website: http://www.skepticalscience.com/

They have posts discussing the most common "skeptical" talking points, and discussing the related scientific literature. For example, you raised past climate change, they have a post on that.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period.htm

You might not be convinced by all of their arguments, but I'm pretty sure you'll find at least a few of them informative.

I would also caution against viewing this too much through the lense of a critique of American liberalism. I'm not American, so maybe this is why that part of your post jumps out at me. While I tend to agree with most of your analyses re:liberals, whether or not global warming is happening is a debate that can be totally divorced from what liberals believe about it.

As for Cockburn, I agree that arguments from authority are unsettling. Much better to dispute his silly reasoning. Take this article for example:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04282007.html

In it, Cockburn notes that annual CO2 emissions went down in the great depression. But atmospheric CO2 still went up! Surely, it should have shrunk if emissions decreased?

This is pretty poor logic. It's like saying that if you're filling a pool with water, and you decrease the flow of water into the pool, the water level in the pool should start shrinking.

What should really happen is that the pool should start filling less quickly, and atmospheric CO2 should rise less quickly. It's a pretty elementary error. Mistakes like that make me sceptical of anything he says on the matter.

Apologies for the length of this post.

MJS: I've helped build some computational models myself, and have opened and examined the innards of others. These experiences have taught me that models are tricky things.

But there's plenty of scope for skepticism. It's not a nutty stance to take the models with a grain of salt. People who reproach Cockburn for his skepticism usually end up citing the expertise and knowledge of the modellers, and asking what the hell qualifies Cockburn to talk about atmospheric physics.

On the contrary, Cockburn's position has little to do with the your discussion of limbs and grains of salt. He rejects AGW outright as a conspiracy run created scientists out to fatten their resumes and a nuclear industry desperate to get out of the doldrums it's been in for the last thirty years. Mutatis mutandis, this is the conspiracy that those buffoons Thabo Mbeki and Manto Msimang used to justify their notorious denial of the relation between HIV and AIDS.

While it is a truism that mathematical models are tricky things, you neglected to mention that there is ample historical data against which the output of climate models can compared. Unlike a mathematician trying to model of the number of angels that will fit on the head of a pin, climate scientists have access to fairly solid empirical data that allows them to substantially validate their models. Nor did you mention that the historical data accumulated over the last few decades indicates that, if anything, the models have been too conservative in their estimation of the effects of AGW.

AGW is conjuctural? Perhaps it is regarded as so in your part of the the Northern Hemisphere. But I can assure you it's effects are quite visible in places like Australia, Central Africa and the Pacific Islands.

MJS: The answer that can't be entertained is the structural one: the idea that our society, as presently constituted, is going to take us all right over the cliff because it can't do otherwise.

This battle to replace these structures having being lost before it began, isn't all the fulmination against the status quo here rather a waste of time? Come to think of it, wasn't the outcome of your battle with liberalism determined, and not in your favour, long before you were even born? And yet you persist?

MJS: conjectural and certainly not an immediate problem,

Given how batty is notion that AGW is either conjectural or, worse, not an immediate problem, I misread this sentence.

the part that annoys me about AGW is how it has become a license to make up any sort of alarmist malthusian bullshit you please.

AGW zealots are constantly making up complete nonsense "Florida will be underwater in 10 years" (or 5 years or 20 years or 30 years, depending on the speaker's mood -- the exact numbers aren't important, it's the righteous sentiment that counts) "By 2020 the world's grain output is going to collapse due to drought" etc. etc. They're almost as bad as the Peak Oil loons in terms of dreaming up absurd apocalyptic scenarios and asserting them as fact.

If you see fit to question any of this complete horse shit, which is not supported by any AGW scientists, they try to label you a 'denier'

The apocalyptic style goes hand in hand with frustrated merit aspirations. Keeping up with the Joneses' SAT scores turns into watching them resort to cannibalism, from the safety and moral rectitude of an eco-friendly bunker. That style makes vindictive neoliberal remediation an easy sell. The current plan consists of individual mandates, rigged markets for carbon trading and corporate welfare for nuke plants. The sins of Cockburn pale in comparison.

For a real apocalypse, picture outraged liberals demanding more and better carbon cops, conservatives setting up snitch hotlines to report the neighbors for eco-hostility and Goldman bankers driving to work in "green" SUVs.

Lajany O. wrote:

AGW is conjuctural? Perhaps it is regarded as so in your part of the the Northern Hemisphere. But I can assure you it's effects are quite visible in places like Australia, Central Africa and the Pacific Islands.

That said, I personally don't have any problem believing the AGW theory. As I mentioned in the post, it's quite congenial to me.

Thanks to Graeme for an informative comment. He's right that the AGW issue goes well beyond what liberals think and don't think, but figuring out liberals, or trying to, just happens to be a hobby of mine. In particular I'm interested in why they get passionate and Inquisitorial about some topics and not others.

The primary problem with the techno-model approach was plumbed by MJS:

They're highly dependent on the parametric assumptions that go into them, for one thing. Those assumptions usually seem reasonable, and when the modelers are honest, which they mostly are, the assumptions are nearly always at least as justifiable as the contrary assumptions would be, absent any real evidence either way.

"Justifiable" is equated with "correct" and suddenly the model is predicting the future.

The EPA-approved model used in the Metro Washington DC area's compliance with the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments is something I'm familiar with, since I helped write the plan for that compliance. Among many flawed assumptions in that model included the notions that building more "road capacity" reduced vehicle emissions as a gross total, despite the clear observations of everyone who paid attention to road building in DC that expanded capacity meant MORE cars sitting in a linear parking lot with idling engines and accumulating emissions.

The computer models used by NOAA to predict weather use notoriously flawed assumptions. In the 12 years I have lived in the Northern Rockies I have watched NOAA be consistently wrong by 5-10 degrees for daily highs and lows in temperature. In the winter they have consistently predicted snow when rain has fallen, and predicted precipitation generally when none has arrived. And by "predicting" I'm referring to THEIR statistics, when the number gets over 50%. When models are so consistently wrong, they should be amended.

Unless the aim is other than accurate prediction.

Which is my problem with the USE of models, generally.

As to AGW generally, put 4 guys in a Mini Cooper after a 3-hour feast at a Mexican all-you-can-eat, and let them drive for 5 hours in that Mini. How do you think the air inside the Mini will become? How does that not give you a thumbnail for AGW?

Sheesh.

This is one of those baby and bathwater deals. It seems that the range of informed differences here has to do with the size of the baby and the depth of the bathwater. One thing we all probably can agree on: right-wing demagogue "denialists" and corporate liberal "climate managerialists" will both mold their claims in accordance with their own cynical interests.

It's the perfect liberal issue because it's so distant and airy and debatable, hence treatable as yet another element of "cultural" (meaning, in the liberal lexicon, "lifestyle") politics. And it's also rather a decent marketing vehicle. If the problem isn't amenable to proof or disproof, claims about the green-ness of _____ product are also not. Hence the tidal wave of corporate marketing to liberals that now includes "carbon" claims.

I'd wager very heavily that peak resources/energy is going to trump all this, and not too far into the future, either. The evidence there is extremely strong, and the attempts at disproof are one and all rooted in cornucopian technology worship/ignorance of basic thermodynamics.

Global warming will someday be shown up as the song we fiddled while we finished, over a mere three centuries burning up the last of the planet's stored energy pools.

It's the perfect liberal issue because it's so distant and airy and debatable, hence treatable as yet another element of "cultural" (meaning, in the liberal lexicon, "lifestyle") politics. And it's also rather a decent marketing vehicle. If the problem isn't amenable to proof or disproof, claims about the green-ness of _____ product are also not. Hence the tidal wave of corporate marketing to liberals that now includes "carbon" claims.

I'd wager very heavily that peak resources/energy is going to trump all this, and not too far into the future, either. The evidence there is extremely strong, and the attempts at disproof are one and all rooted in cornucopian technology worship/ignorance of basic thermodynamics.

Global warming will someday be shown up as the song we fiddled while we finished, over a mere three centuries burning up the last of the planet's stored energy pools.

MD, I'm not quite the alarmist I used to be on "peak this-and-that" issues. Big problems on the near horizon to be sure, especially regarding looming shortages of usable water and associated distributional/geopolitical questions -- but the earth is not a "closed system" to which the 2nd Law can be straightforwardly applied. Solar communism with an acceptable global standard of living might be hypothetically attainable... see the excellent work by David Schwarzmann (?) on this. Politically likely, though? Not.

PS. For purposes of aesthetic slimming, can one of MD's double posts be expurgated?

The computer models used by NOAA to predict weather use notoriously flawed assumptions. In the 12 years I have lived in the Northern Rockies I have watched NOAA be consistently wrong by 5-10 degrees for daily highs and lows in temperature. In the winter they have consistently predicted snow when rain has fallen, and predicted precipitation generally when none has arrived. And by "predicting" I'm referring to THEIR statistics, when the number gets over 50%. When models are so consistently wrong, they should be amended.

Which is my problem with the USE of models, generally.

Yeah, who has any need for pesky and all too fallible mathematical models, least of all when faced with data that contains random variation? To overcome the known fallibility of mathematical modelling, I generally recommend reading tomorrow's weather in the fresh entrails of a he goat. To forecast the success of the coming year's rains six months out, requires the use of an elephant's entrails, no less.

Sheesh.

But Cockburn is not saying, "Looking at the case for and against,--as a layman--I'm not convinced the case for is very good."--what I grant to be a rational conclusion. He is instead saying, "Climate change is a hoax, it's a quack science cooked up by the nuclear industry and other corporate interests." A claim of which he is a zealous defender, and one bolstered, to the extent he provides references at all, by the work of an obscure Polish scientist (one who was also responsible for helping to downplay the long-term risk of contamination in the Chernobyl disaster affected areas).

Cockburn is not, strictly speaking, a skeptic; possessed with the sight of God, his mind is clearly made up--it is his lack of scientific integrity rather than his prejudices on the question for which he deserves ridicule.

Cockburn's pigheadishness on AGW is not a byproduct of a generalized irrationalism on his part. His particular variety of "denialism" is regrettable, yes. But given the prevailing left discourse on human-made climate change, its frightening possible trajectories, and the terrible pitfalls of capitalist non-solutions, Cockburn's peculiar position is a tempest in a teapot, one that can be afforded. It's not like he's bolstering the full-blown hydrocarbon corporate "denialists" (to the extent they're still out there, gunning away) -- they've got their own preferred line-up of hired guns. AFAIC, his outlying stance on this one issue adds to his irascible charm.

I understand Cockburn's view the same way Peter Ward does above.

It's not a very convincing argument and therefore it makes me think he's trying to sock away some money by shilling a bit. How can anyone hold that view seriously? It's got internal inconsistency, logical misdirection.

Just because people will use AGW as an excuse to operate a long con game -- more nuke power, redirecting emissions with "hybrid fuel" motor vehicles, "green" labelling to boost a "green economy" -- doesn't mean AGW is a scam. Nor does it mean we shouldn't consider, discuss or try actually sensible, logically relevant measures.

The fact that Al Gore made his "An Inconvenient Truth" movie to jump-start a few business ventures he'd cooked up, that doesn't mean we have to consider the factual portions of Al's sales movie to be bogus.

Facts can be used to nefarious ends. The nefariousness derives from the ends, not from the facts.

I'm pretty sure Alexander Cockburn can see this problem, if his past writings are any indication of his insights and ability to see past charades & theater.

I couldn't prostitute myself that way. But I'm not him, am I?

PS: I suppose AC could be using sarcasm that I'm missing. Dmitry Orlov often walks that thin line between seriousness & mockery, as in this post here:

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010/02/products-and-services-for-permanently.html

So maybe the laugh's on me. Only Cockburn knows for sure.

@CF Oxtrot and your 10:02 PM post.

I grant you every point, except for one (or would that be two?) -- I don't think Cockburn's motive is to make a few fast bucks, and I don't think he is cashing in on any such motives, whether he has them or not.

From an intellectual historian's point of view, I find Cockburn's willful stupidity on this subject to be utterly fascinating. I wouldn't have it any other way. Who wants a cardboard cutout?

The difficulty as I see it with climate research, in addition to the factors MJS has already stated, is that there is, so far, only a single observable entity. (Global economic forecasting should suffer from the same problem exactly. Does it?)

It is like a science of 'one person as subject'. There is no 'control' in the experimental design sense and there is nothing to be done about this problem until we discover a few more earths complete with atmospheres.

Straighten me out, please.

(Global economic forecasting should suffer from the same problem exactly. Does it?)

Mathematical economics, by which we usually mean neoclassical economics, may be fairly internally consistent. However, it is based on fundamental assumptions that are pure ideology and do not stand up to scrutiny. The absurd assumptions on which it is based mean that, in contrast to say physics or thermodynamics, neoclassical economics is pure ideology dressed up in mathematical garb.

See for example the book chapter linked to below:

However, and this fact is strange indeed, while scientific research takes
reality as its point of departure, economics is based on a resolutely
anti-realistic founding principle. This principle, called "methodological
individualism," treats society as nothing more than the aggregate of its
component individuals, each of which, as 'Homo oeconomicus', is in turn
defined in terms of laws expressing what, for it, would be rational
behavior. It is left rather unclear whether, in the outlook of this
"science," the mental structure built on the basis of interaction among
these behaviors is supposed to give us a picture approximating social
reality, or whether it is put forward normatively, as a model of an ideal
social order.

http://www.mail-archive.com/pen-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu/msg32434.html

The computer models used by NOAA to predict weather use notoriously flawed assumptions. In the 12 years I have lived in the Northern Rockies I have watched NOAA be consistently wrong by 5-10 degrees for daily highs and lows in temperature. In the winter they have consistently predicted snow when rain has fallen, and predicted precipitation generally when none has arrived. And by "predicting" I'm referring to THEIR statistics, when the number gets over 50%. When models are so consistently wrong, they should be amended.

Which is my problem with the USE of models, generally.

What pretentious windbaggery! Models are used in virtually every aspect of life in the industrialised countries today, from bridge construction, to aircraft design, to the management of the electrical power grid to which you're presumably connected. If you have a fundamental problem with the USE of models generally, a suitable course of action might be to find some remote third world country where a substantial peasantry still exists, and move there. Hoe in you hand, reading goat entrails by day, and sleeping your unlit grass thatched mud hut by night, you'll be able to rest easy that mathematical models have almost no direct role in your life.

Now to the nonsense you implied about supposed the futility of weather forecasting specifically. The inaccuracy you observed probably reflects the poor quality or sparsity of the data available to the forecasters wherever you live, than any fundamental error in the models they use. Given the decrepit and underfunded state of the non-military infrastructure in the US, it is quite probable that data supplied to the forecasters by weather stations in the more remote regions of the country is lacking, late or inaccurate.

The primary problem with the techno-model approach was plumbed by MJS

What MJS wrote on this is such general nonsense that it covers everything at once, while substantially addressing nothing in particular.

Rather than the situation MJS described, which corresponds to all cats being black in the night, mathematical models in the real world exhibit the same amount variation in quality and accuracy as other products of human labour.

And, oddly enough, most of of the people who have launched into such visceral condemnation of scientists for their impertinence in daring to model the climate, are quite reticent in condemning the use of aerodynamic models and vibrational models in the design and construction of bridges, aeroplanes, sky scrapers, power grids etc.

An analogy for the climate research challenge:
Medical science is rather like other sciences. Medical practice on the individual is an application of medical science. Things go wrong under best practice occasionally for reasons that can't be fathomed or are only understood later. Climate science is more like medical practice than like medical science because their can be only one 'patient' under our observation and there will never be any useful post mortem.

Yes, legitimate criticisms of over-dependence on models is "pretentious windbaggery," while defending those models when they fuck up, that's noble.

Well done, Lungfish Onanism.

Yes, legitimate criticisms of over-dependence on models is "pretentious windbaggery," while defending those models when they fuck up, that's noble.

Look, if you find weather forecasts to be a sign of "over-dependence" on mathematical models, and if this "over-dependence" raises your bile so much, then why watch the weather forecasts at all, rather than, say, read weather the trusty old way, in fresh entrails of a goat?

I encourage you to read, The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate.

"Few of us have really investigated the science..."

Then I suggest you do, before writing this kind of easily debunked, counterproductive and frankly juvenile excrement.

You can start here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/
(HINT: it's not all about computer models: never was, never will be)

"Isn't the question... academic?"

No, having a reality-based view of the world is most definitely not academic.

Will anything really be done about AGW?

No, of course not.

But then again, absolutely nothing substantive or constructive will be done about virtually everything you write about (while butchering the English language) herein.

So why not fold up tent?

Isn't the question... academic?

This site has officially jumped the shark and is now in moonbat infested waters.

What's next on the batshit crazy menu?

An evening with Alex Jones perhaps?

Maybe some Intelligent Design?

How about some Nine-Eleven truthiness?

Speaking of truth, it's obvious you get it (if I'm making the correct inference, which, unfortunately, is more often than not a risky proposition given the decipher-me-if-you-can writing style of this blog):

"The answer that can't be entertained is the structural one: the idea that our society, as presently constituted, is going to take us all right over the cliff because it can't do otherwise."

But understanding the reason(s) for collapse is not academic.

Understanding that infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet -- if understood within a small community, for example (TransitionUS.org) -- could potentially lead to some practical, reality-based survival techniques whereas believing that oil is abiotic and AGW is a hoax potentially and probably will lead to all manner of incredibly stupid, destined-to-fail, and profoundly destructive "solutions".

Thanks for adding to the increasing moonbattery of the Left-in-name-only and the general scientific illiteracy of the not-so-United States.

Good job, keep up the good work.

Have fun with Alex OrganFriction (and his loon-laced-rag), Alex Jones, the Troofers and the demented Design of your Intelligence.

I'm grateful to Monkey, above, for illustrating my point for me so amply. This topic brings out a purple-faced, spit-scattering frenzy in a lot of the true believers.

It is not only prohibited to argue against orthodoxy; it is prohibited even to suggest that orthodoxy doesn't possess apodictic certainty.

It really seems to have become a kind of secular religion, and the psychology of this phenomenon is still not entirely clear to me.

The illustration on this post is a very slow loader and should be 'MP3'd' or something. Rather surprising for a picture that in graphic quality appears to clipped from a newspaper. Just a suggestion.

It is not only prohibited to argue against orthodoxy; it is prohibited even to suggest that orthodoxy doesn't possess apodictic certainty.

Michael's hero Cockburn argues with apodeictic certainty that climate science is a conspiracy theory between the nuclear industry and climate scientists. How slimy of him to then smear those of us who have expressed incredulity towards the conspiracy mongering by Cockburn and others around this issue, as being defenders of apodeictic orthodoxies.

Michael's, contribution to this discussion in essence a slimy and dishonest defence of a "method" of deciding upon particular scientific questions by resort to conspiracy theories.

Unfortunately, being too dishonest and cowardly, and perhaps wily, to come out and say that he supports the details of his hero's ludicrous conspiracy theory outright, he instead attempts to legitimate the conspiracy mongering by smearing and slandering everyone who doesn't accept the resort to conspiracy theories as a valid method for deciding scientific and social questions.

Given his position in relation to Cockburn's conspiracy mongering on AGW, what I would like to know is when Michael is going to speak up in defence of the former president of South Africa Thabo Mbeki and his health minister Dr Manto "Beetroot" Msimang, who were so unjustly pilloried by the scientific establishment for their claim that the connection between AIDS and the Human Immunodeficiency Virus was a conspiracy between academics and the pharmaceutical industry.

Sauce for the goose being sauce for the gander, etc, I await Michael's issue of fatwawawas in which he thunders against the "apodeictic certainity" and "scientific orthodoxies" of scientists and AIDS activists who rejected Mbeki-Beetroot conspiracy position on HIV/AIDS.

If I were Smith I would point out that "deciding upon particular scientific questions by resort to conspiracy theories" does not entail deciding upon ALL scientific questions by resort to conspiracy theories.

Smith may not be as great a Sophist as I, however.

The cry of "conspiracy theory" is invariably raised by somebody as soon as a structural explanation for any social phenomenon is suggested. Noam Chomsky is good on this topic, but I can't recall the locus classicus.

If I were Smith I would point out that "deciding upon particular scientific questions by resort to conspiracy theories" does not entail deciding upon ALL scientific questions by resort to conspiracy theories.

Any fatwawawa from Michael on this would be welcome. However, Michael has so far seems to have determined that it is easier to slander anyone who expresses incredulity at Dr Beetroot's Cockburn's conspiracy theories than to come out and say that he shares Dr Beetroot's Cockburn's basic approach to any particular scientific question.

The cry of "conspiracy theory" is invariably raised by somebody as soon as a structural explanation for any social phenomenon is suggested. Noam Chomsky is good on this topic, but I can't recall the locus classicus.

Excellent. Now we know that the "cry of conspiracy theory" was raised because Dr Manto "Beetroot" Msimang and Thabo Mbeki, actually possessed a structural explanation for the connection between Human Immunodeficiency Virus and AIDS. And this conclusion is supported by appeals to no less an authority than Chomsky.

What have you been reading recently Michael, animals' entrails?

Lajany -- For heaven's sake, man, what do Manto Msimang -- whoever he is -- and Thabo Mbeki have to do with anything being discussed here? You're off in a corner arguing with figments of your own imagination.

Take a deep breath, review the bidding so far, and come to your senses.

what do Manto Msimang -- whoever he is -- and Thabo Mbeki have to do with anything being discussed here?

Where Dr Manto "Beetroot" Msimang and Mbeki attacked the scientific orthodoxy that explains AIDS in terms of infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus as nothing more than a conspiracy between the medical research community and the pharmaceutical industry, Cockburn identifies AGW as a conspiracy between the scientific establishment and the nuclear lobby.

Ah. I see. So then -- modulo all the conventional thought-police chatter about "conspiracy theory" -- your syllogism runs something like this:

• Msimang and Mbeki oppose scientific orthodoxy.
• Cockburn opposes scientific orthodoxy.
• M&M are mistaken.
• Therefore, Cockburn is mistaken.

No, your most recent fatuous fatwawawa still does not answer the question as to the nature and source of the apodeictic insights by which you have so accurately distinguished between the positions of Contrarian (TM) Cockburn and Dr Beetroot, between the worthy conspiracy theory and the unworthy.

This is a very odd style of argument: How, Mr Smith, is what you're saying different from Schmegeggius on Fistulas? A difficult question to answer, if one has never read Schmegeggius; but also, fortunately, a pointless question if fistulas have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

This is a very odd style of argument: How, Mr Smith, is what you're saying different from Schmegeggius on Fistulas? A difficult question to answer, if one has never read Schmegeggius; but also, fortunately, a pointless question if fistulas have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Well, using one methodology Mr Cockburn has arrived at an apparently excellent and praiseworthy scientific conclusion, whereas, using the same methodology, Dr Beetroot arrived at a scientific conclusion which an acolyte of Mr Cockburn here finds rather embarrassing.

Thus, a simple question remains standing, how and why does the methodology by which Cockburn and arrived at his ground breaking conclusions suddenly become worthless when applied to the interesting and important scientific question considered by Dr Beetroot?

Let me guess: Maggie is standing in for Michael, while the rug is .... Katrina vanden Heuvel? Or could it be Melissa Lacewell Harris?

But does not, despite his numerous, witty and sagacious insights into matters mathematical, philosophical and philological, deign to answer certain questions concerning the disturbing similarities between the scientific methods and conclusions of Mr Cockburn and one Dr Beetroot?

Let me guess: Maggie is standing in for Michael, while the rug is .... Katrina vanden Heuvel? Or could it be Melissa Lacewell Harris?

But he does not, despite his numerous, witty and sagacious insights into matters mathematical, philosophical and philological, deign to answer certain questions concerning the disturbing similarities between the scientific methods and conclusions of Mr Cockburn and one Dr Beetroot?

Got it! Maggie == L.O. and rug is Smith or L.O.s topic.

But when is that 'Beetroot' bomb going to go off? I keep checking in and it just keeps ticking. L.O. are you going force me to google it?